Saturday, November 04, 2006

Sorry ... but not good enough

Above: Tonight almost a week after the sections fell to ground the gap in the scaffold structure has been replaced but the protective netting has not been replaced . The upper level of the scaffold frame has been removed and thus when men work at the uppermost level there will be no protective netting to surround them and thus protect the public below. Sorry ...but this is not good enough . Above : The scaffolding installed as it should be : all the way up to the top of the building and completely enclosed in protective netting .This picture was taken 8 September just before the too small front -end loader was brought to the scene to lift materials to the roof . Above : This machine is not a crane it is a large front-end loader and though cheaper to rent than a properly sized crane it should not have been used here to lift materials to the roof because it required that a considerable portion of the scaffolding and the protective netting had to be removed .This scaffolding and protective netting were never replaced after the front-end loader left the construction site .

As was reported in the previous post a too small lifting device was used to lift materials to the roof of 120 and the use of this device required that scaffolding and protective netting be removed from the scaffold structure . According to NYPD Emergency Services personnel strong winds and a too large and inadequately secured tarp lifted two sections of another scaffold , placed on the tarp on the roof , into the air and just over the parapet of the building to descend onto the top of an automobile and onto the sidewalk below .If the scaffolding had been inplace with its enclosing protective netting as seen in the picture above from 8 September ,most likely the sections tossed from the roof would have been caught and deflected into the interior of the scaffold structure . This is why scaffolding and protective netting are required to be in place as in the picture from 8 September : its all there to protect the people and property below .

The lifting device that should have been used to lift materials to the roof of 120 should have been a telescoping boom crane large enough , with a long enough reach that the scaffolding and protective netting did not have to be removed . Certainly the large front-end loader was cheaper to rent than the properly sized crane .

There have been two deaths related to faulty scaffolding and a very serious crane accident recently in this part of town . We are just lucky that someone was not killed or injured here this time at 120 St Marks Place .In this current construction frenzy all that really seems to matter is money . Sorry again ... but that is just not acceptable.

P.S 5 November , 2006 . Concerning the automobile that was damaged by the section of interior scaffolding ( separate from the scaffolding assembly at the front of the building ) that had been , according to NYPD ESS personnel ,left lying on the tarp on the roof and that was launched by the tarp and wind over the front of the building , the damaged vehicle was damaged , at least according to the body shop estimate that I saw , to the amount of $14000 .The damage was much worse than it appears in the pictures because the structural framing of the roof of the vehicle was damaged requiring that most of the the roof structure be re-placed : in short the vehicle was totaled .

This blog is miraculous! A dog shts on Ave. B and you know all about it. How did you get to know so much about cranes? How do you have the time to spend so much time writing here/combing the streets for info?Do you need more informers?